Then again, some of you are the same people who idolize Suge Knight, so I suppose you already believe that Death Row is supposed to be a place to chill. I wish you ill.
This was something I was about to post to Bomani Jones' website, but I know he doesn't deserve it. It's just that I'm having a hard time reconciling the ignorant influence of the Coaltion of the Damned with intelligent blackfolks.
Now for those of you who don't know, the Coalition of the Damned are those various misfits, commies, sympathizers, idiot conspiracy theorists, paranoids, devils advocates, ne'er do wells and otherwise trifling individuals who have nothing better to do with their political rights in America, than to badmouth police and the justice system. Whenever there's an opportunity to trump up charges of police brutality of systematic injustice, they show up like cockroaches in a bag of grits.
You may recall their outrage at the arrest of Stanley Miller, the car thief who got popped upside the head with an LAPD flashlight. They were out for cops' blood, except that Stanley Miller shed none. They also attached themselves like flies over the body of Devin Brown, the 14 year old car theif who was fatally shot by the LAPD after a car chase at 3am in the morning. They pretend to be lamenting the fate of black men who die violent deaths, but were nowhere to be found around Tommy Edward Scott's funeral. When an ex-drug soldier for a South American cartel held his daughter hostage and shot at police in LA this year, the Coalition made sure that the story was spun against the cops.
The Coalition of the Damned is entirely predictable. The problem is that they stand in the way of common sense and justice. It's not that citizens don't have gripes, its that these citizens have nothing but ill will for the very people and system that is put in place to protect them. But we already know where they're coming from, they're ignorant, apolitical and an embarrassment because they're the idiots who get on the tube as 'representing the community'. Yeah right. The real problem here is how the most egregious of this reactionary nonsense, with a whiff of ideology perverts the judgement of otherwise reputable and solid citizens. And I'm not talking about Snoop Dogg.
I can't say that there is anyone with a reputation worth much, outside of Larry Fishburne, who has shown up on the Crip side of this equation. We're never going to get his side of the story in the blogosphere so there's no use barking up that tree. But we may come to recognize a few notables who deserve a bit more of our righteous wrath. And we should reserve special nuggets of it for those who claim to be protecting all that is black.
What is making me fell ill and feisty are those who partake of the fruits of jackleg literature. I am thinking specifically of those fans of Jawanza Kunjufu, who made a small pile of chips bilking college students out of their hard earned dollars with his lectures on 'The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys'. So I challenge anyone today who portrays themselves as a defender of black communities, as I challenge any who would heed such individuals to take note of which side of this battle they line up on.
Let us recall Chesterton's wisdom:
"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
So anyone who defends Tookie on the principle of opposition to the death penalty, I would hope you merely recuse yourself from discussion. If your principle is indeed sound, you would defend the life of the man who tortured your mother. That kind of sheepishness really has no place in the discussion of hard-core gangbangers. Go watch Teletubbies or something, but really - STFU. You don't have a dog in this fight. Understand that we will elbow you aside in our pursuit of rough justice. This kitchen is too hot for you.
There is a persistent thread underlying the Coalition's allies in this fight which is that the Prison Industrial Complex is a place for black men to become model citizens. They make no distinction from the tale of Tookie and the tale of Rubin Carter or Malcolm X or Geronimo Pratt. It's just innocent black man, evil system. No distinctions made. Search for the keywords 'Amerikkka' and 'just us'. For those who believe there is a permanent focus of African American life on jailtime Tookie must indeed be a hero. He's at the top of the pyramid, Death Row. They'll believe that his children's books are the only thing that can spare innocent black boys from a life of... well what is it a life of? Not exactly crime, because all black people are 'criminals' seeing that we all get into that system. We're not really criminals but we end up there anyway because that's what the system does - scours the country for black boys and men to incarcerate, right?. The best we can do is grow up in jail, right?
Ack. Sounds like something out of a bizzarro version of The Green Mile. Tookie Williams, magic Negro. Heal us oh benighted one!
I'm sick of this trope in the lowbrow culture of black America. Stakes is high, and nobody over here is convinced by this baggy-pants logic. So once again I'm taking The Hard Case and letting the devil take the hindmost. Who writes black history? Black history professors, not convicts, nor even bloggers. But let it be known that in two thousand and five, there were some of us who stood up and said that the great Tookie, Grand Wizard of the Crip Clux Clan should be destroyed. On the other side was the Coalition of the Damned, may they rot in the dustbin of black history. The Old School Hard Case goes a little something like this:
Are the people at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean black? If they survived the Middle Passage, would they consider us black? I raise this provocative question in the context of the perennial topic of The Survival of the Black Race. Presuming that this is a difficult and worthwhile outcome, who gets to decide? It sounds like an ignorant question but I think not. The answer, inevitably, is that the successful get to decide.
Every man's death diminishes me, but for Tookie, not much at all. God forgive me but some days I wish he could take his supporters with him.
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